Missing juniors: State to crack down on testing loophole

November 19, 2009

Taking aim at a loophole used to exclude academically weak 11th-graders from state testing, Illinois education officials said this week they want to create a single standard to determine when students are counted as juniors and therefore must take the exam.

The change would thrust state policymakers into what traditionally had been left to local educators to decide. And it would ensure that high schools are held accountable for the academic achievement of every student.

Officials with the Illinois State Board of Education said the new direction is needed to end a mounting pattern of abuses.

Nearly 10,000 students now in their final year of high school -- about 7 percent of all Illinois 12th graders -- skipped the two-day Prairie State Achievement Exam last spring for no apparent reason, according to a new state analysis.

These students didn't qualify as juniors in May, and their districts chose not to test them, state records show. But months later in October they were listed as 12th graders -- seemingly skipping 11th grade.

Because these low-achieving students did not take the rigorous exam, their home high schools were never held accountable, allowing them to skirt a central tenet of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Students shut out of the testing process tended to be disproportionately black, low-income or have disabilities, said Joyce Zurkowski, who oversees student assessment for the state education agency.

"That's disconcerting," Zurkowski said. "We have to be sure we're all following the same guidelines, and right now, we're not. There's a difference from district to district, and in some cases, there's a pretty big difference."

Zurkowski presented the findings to a state testing review committee this month. The state will work with high school experts and administrators to draft the new guidelines that could take effect in spring 2011.

The state recommendations come on the heels of a Tribune analysis published last month that found 34,000 Illinois sophomores -- about 20 percent -- didn't officially advance to junior level status in 2008-09 and, therefore, didn't take the high school exam.

The state's new report used internal data to count how many of those students became seniors this fall, isolating those who essentially skipped junior year from those who dropped out or transferred out of state. The state would not provide that data to the Tribune last month.